


Tiptoe

by minnabird



Series: Journeys End in Lovers Meeting [2]
Category: Campaign (Podcast)
Genre: Future Fic, it's just "this is weird how do i start": the fic, the whole Mynock crew but mostly them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-26
Updated: 2018-07-26
Packaged: 2019-06-16 12:09:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15436737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minnabird/pseuds/minnabird
Summary: Sian's alive, and here, and finally on board the Mynock - and all Bacta can do is hide.





	Tiptoe

Bacta turned to Sian, shifting to settle Tamlin on one hip.

There was no reason to be nervous, he told himself. He was only introducing the woman he’d (pined over? Grieved? Admired? Thought to revenge?) just recruited to his crew. _Anakin Skywalker, she’s meeting the family,_ he thought, pushing down the nervous laugh that bubbled in his chest. He cleared his throat.

“Tamlin, this is Sian. She’s going to come on the ship with us for a while. Sian, this is Tamlin.” Some emotion flitted across Sian’s face, but it was gone before Bacta could identify it. She reached one hand out to Tamlin gravely.

“It’s good to meet you,” she said.

“ _Very_ good to meet you, too,” came a voice from the Mynock’s ramp, laden with suggestion, and Bacta suddenly wanted to sink into the ground. Sian’s fashion sense hadn’t changed – she wore black leather and an air of danger. Of _course_ Tryst was interested.

“And that’s Tryst. Ignore him, that’s usually the best policy,” Bacta said.

“I know who he is,” Sian said dryly.

“So you’ve heard of me?”

“I’ve seen your bounty,” she said.

“I’ll introduce you to the rest of the crew,” Bacta cut in, putting Tamlin down and chivvying him and Sian towards the ship. Tamlin dawdled, sticking close to Bacta.

“Uncle Bacta, is that…?” he whispered, a little too loudly for Bacta’s liking.

“I’ll tell you in a minute, buddy,” he whispered back. He raised his voice and called to Tryst, “Hey, grab the others. All-hands meeting in the kitchen – no clipboard.”

“Why don’t you grab the others? I’d like to…”

“Go. Get. The. Others,” Bacta said through gritted teeth.

“All right, fine.” Tryst held up both hands. “We’ll have _plen-_ ty of time in hyperspace.” He turned and got onto the ship, thankfully, before Bacta could respond.

“You’re friends?” Sian said, raising an eyebrow.

Bacta met Sian's eyes, inexplicably defensive. "We're like brothers," he said. He considered, then added, "But if he bothers you too much, let me know."

“I can take care of myself,” she said, without any bite.

The three of them went to the kitchen. It was bigger these days, but once the whole crew was inside, Bacta felt like he was standing in a crowd. Here was everyone he cared most about, all in one room. Lyn, Tamlin, Neemo, and Leenik filled the booth. Tony and several attendant ysalamiri had joined them; Tony’s head rested on Leenik’s feet. Sian had chosen to remain standing, back against the stove, as everyone walked in. Tryst, meanwhile, had spun a chair around and sat backwards in it.

Bacta turned to face them all. Pointing to each, he named the members of the crew for Sian. Then he cleared his throat. “Everyone, this is Sian. Jeisel.”

“Holy kriff,” Tryst said, with a tone like someone who had just won a lottery.

“Sian _Jeisel?_ Like…” Leenik gestured vaguely at Bacta’s chest.

“Yeah, that Sian Jeisel,” Bacta said. To Neemo’s confused look, he added, “We knew each other back in the Clone Wars.” Leenik whispered none-too-subtly in Neemo’s ear, and Bacta cut off his noise of realization with a cough. “So, she’s coming on board to train Tamlin.”

Tamlin sat bolt upright. “ _Really?!”_

Bacta had to grin. “Yeah, really.”

Questions started pouring out of Tamlin’s mouth, one after another, but they stopped abruptly when Sian pushed off the stove and started forward. She offered a hand. “Maybe I can start to answer those for you. Bacta tells me you have a dojo? Why don’t you show me.” Tamlin looked at her hand, eyes wide, then nodded very quickly and hopped off the booth’s bench.

Bacta heard Tamlin's voice raise in a question, but he couldn't make out the words as they disappeared down the hallway. He could feel the eyes of the entire crew on him – except Lyn, who seemed to be avoiding eye contact.

“All right, get it out of your systems now,” he said, resigned.

Bacta weathered the first deluge of questions from Leenik and Tryst fairly well: "Where's she gonna _sleep_?" (Bacta's room, he didn't need it); "What's she been doing? How did she live?" (except for the bounty hunting, he didn't know); questions he ignored because they didn't deserve an answer.

Lyn was quiet, until she asked, "Does she know? How you feel about her?"

Bacta's face went hot. Silence reigned for a few seconds as he scrambled for an answer. "I don't – I mean..." He sighed, rubbing his hand over his face. "No. Not the way you all do."

"She doesn't know about the...?" Lyn gestured vaguely to his chest, and all Bacta could do was shake his head.

"And I don't need you telling her." He turned to look at Leenik and Tryst. "I mean it. Teaching a youngling is enough for her to be dealing with. Things with her are...complicated, and she doesn't need that right now, okay?"

"Why are you looking at us?" Tryst said, crossing his arms.

Leenik mirrored the gesture. "Yeah, you think we're gonna embarrass you or something?"

Bacta threw his hands up. "Yes! It's what we do, we poke and pry and, and matchmake everyone, so of course you're going to do that, and that would be embarrassing, because...because...!" Bacta couldn't think of a sufficiently snappy way to sum up the reasons that he and Sian were not, realistically, ever going to follow up on that kiss. Not least of which was that she didn't want to – that had been clear enough.

"Buddy," Tryst said, "this is a bigger mess than we're used to."

"But we're willing to get our hands dirty if that's what you want." Leenik wiggled his long fingers with what seemed like a little too much glee to Bacta.

"I don't," Bacta said softly. "I'm asking you to just leave this one alone, all right?"

There wasn't much to say after that, although he managed to pull a promise out of his crewmates. As Leenik and Tryst left, Leenik said, “Does this mean Bacta’s not a black widow?”

“Good point. Maybe my sister _isn’t_ dead meat.”

The last thing Bacta heard as their voices drifted off down the hallway was Leenik saying, “…Do you think this means Obi-Wan Kenobi’s alive?”

* * *

Sian was unexpectedly unhappy about taking Bacta's room, but he'd ignored her protests and moved his things to the gun turret. Just like old times. It was a slightly bigger space, more sterile than his grungy, tight quarters on the Mynock, but it would do for Bacta. He retired there when everyone else went to bed, and spent the first night adding the homey touches it needed as quietly as possible.

Early the next morning, he heard movement, and poked his head down. A moment later, he was glad he had, rather than joining the person below, because it was Sian, and not Lyn, as he'd expected. He pulled his head back quickly and listened with every line of his body. He'd forgotten she was an early riser, a habit drilled into her by Jedi training and military position.

"KAT, what's going on in the kitchen?" Bacta murmured, leaning in close to the turret's interface panel.

"Be more specific," KAT said, and Bacta winced at how loud it seemed.

This time, he lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper. "What recipe is...?"

The lights on the panel that indicated KAT's attention dimmed as he heard from down the hallway, "How does a person make a cup of caf around here?" He went silent and tense, and he didn't try to hail KAT again as the AI apparently helped Sian navigate the kitchen. He'd forgotten how disoriented he'd been, when they first got this ship. The Verpine had interesting ideas about how to lay out a kitchen.

He didn't go down to breakfast until he heard a couple of the others get up, and he kept to that routine as Sian settled into the ship.

The fourth morning, the footsteps stopped when they reached the entrance to his turret, and a voice floated up. "I know you're not asleep when I come down here," Sian said. "You don't have to hide."

Sheepishly, Bacta came to the ladder. "That obvious?"

Sian raised her eyebrow at him. "I can still feel you." She brushed her fingers over her temple.

"Right," Bacta said. Should've been obvious. "I, uh...I thought you might want some space."

"Come eat breakfast." Sian didn't wait for him to answer, just crooked a commanding finger and started down the hallway. Bacta climbed down after her, powerless to resist.

“Sounds like you figured out the kitchen,” he offered awkwardly, as Sian movee unerringly to the cabinet where they kept the egg powder. It shook him to see her moving through his home like it was a familiar place to her. Manners returned to him late. “Here, let me…” He stepped forward, grabbing the pan, and Sian raised her hands as she relinquished it, a glint of humor in her eyes.

The amusement disappeared as quickly as it arrived, and Sian frowned at Bacta again. He could see it, out of the corner of his eye, the way her attention locked on him. “You don’t sleep,” she said slowly.

Bacta clapped his hand guiltily to the back of his neck. It wasn’t the only thing that had changed about him, but he felt what he was now acutely. All the ways he’d coped. Sian moved, and then her hand was peeling his away from his neck.

“Oh, Bacta.” Her voice was soft, but she said it like she had seen and understood.

Memory gripped Bacta. He closed his eyes against it, but snatches of that night played out in his head –

_The last patient checkup at the end of his shift in the overflowing medical tent. The sudden clamor of monitors across the room – a flurry of desperate activity, a fight for a life. Loss. It was defeat after defeat sometimes, trying to keep his brothers alive, especially after a hard loss like the one two nights before_

_Bacta had to get away, after. He found himself in a supply room, shaking to pieces, clutching the arm that held nearly a full sleeve of tattooed numbers to his chest. She had found him there, drawn by the sound or her other senses, he didn’t know._

_He doesn’t remember, later, even half of what he poured out to her in that room. But he does remember lamenting that clones had such short lives – that at best, it would be half a human’s life, but so many would never make it that far. That he might not. That Synox might not, or any of the brothers he’d known all his life._

_He remembers because Sian had tucked her fingers under his chin so that he met her eyes. “It’s a stupid waste,” she had said, her voice low and intense. “And I am sorry for it.” And he remembers how she’d forced him to sleep that night, too, by taking him not to the barracks but to her quarters and glaring him down when he tried to protest taking the bed._

_And he recalls, also, his stubbornness even then about sleep. He had been no stranger to forty-eight hour days. Had groused to her, on happier days, about the need for it. “You’re a medic,” she’d told him more than once. “You know what your body needs.” And he’d listened to her._

_Then. Not now._

Now, his body prickled with awareness of her proximity, and the warmth tugging at his stomach competed with the knowledge that he should pull away. Instead, he stayed still, trying to breathe normally. Her hands relaxed, and he thought she would step away, braced himself for the cold space between them. Instead, her arms slipped around him, folding over his chest and holding on tightly. He felt her cheek press against his back. The next breath he released was something between a cough and a sob.

He didn’t know what to make of it. He was too afraid to ask. She had never hugged him like this; her reassurances had always been firm shoulder squeezes, small touches, a hand bracing his back. She held on now as if he were the only solid thing.

As if she needed it as much as he did.

With that realization, he broke free and turned, catching her before she could get the wrong idea. Her eyes were _wet_. The sight unmoored him, and in the same moment brought him back to himself. “Sian,” he croaked. She’d been running – running so hard she was sure Bacta, who she had trusted with the younglings the last time they met, was the enemy.

Who had she had to trust since then? What had she lost? How had she become a hunter, when she had always had such strong opinions about who had the right to violence and coercion? What negotiations had she had to make with the galaxy, and with herself?

“We hardly know each other anymore,” he admitted, to himself and to her. “But it’s not nothing, being in the same place. Is it?” He swallowed dryly. She might still –

“No,” Sian said. “It’s not nothing.” She reached up, cupping his cheek in her palm. Her eyes studied his gravely. “I’ve seen pieces of this new life of yours, but I want to know how _you_ fit into it. Who are you now, Bacta?”

Bacta smiled. “That’s a long story. Will you tell me yours, too?”

Her smile was a little more strained, but she nodded. “It’s only fair. But first, can you explain one thing?” She pointed up at the ceiling, where the Verpine had installed a tiled depiction of a rooster – just wrong enough to be slightly unsettling. Bacta surprised them both by laughing.

Well, an easier story to start. Why not? They had time.


End file.
